


impact

by archaeologies



Category: Persona 3
Genre: AAAAAA, THIS IS SO MUCH, bplease, don't let the beginning trick youu into thinking, it.... really isn;t, my writing style is really not suited to comedy, sees finally find out what minatos listening to, that this is a serious or angsty fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archaeologies/pseuds/archaeologies
Summary: She knows, on all levels, that what she’s about to do is wrong, that it violates all the trust the two have built between them, but her thumb tingles with curiosity, and she presses play.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junpei_tenmyouji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junpei_tenmyouji/gifts).



Sometimes, it feels like SEES hurt each other more than they help. For all the good they do, for all the people that live in the world they’re trying to save, there’s some colossal fuck up waiting around the corner, some heated exchange, some act of violence, between them, some horrid, nasty words spat out by tongues that have never tasted kindness, by teeth that have been ground to dust by years of biting back the urge to fight. Takeba Yukari has been on both ends of the spite, the distrust, the resentment, at some point or another during the length of her service. How could she not have? How could any of them have avoided it? An environment like this would be difficult for anyone, but they’re children masquerading as soldiers; children who haven’t learnt to trust, learnt to forgive, learnt to live, yet. Children who call barracks home, whose mouths taste like the metal of their blood and their guns and their resolution, who were bred and born for battle, trained by years of neglect and abandonment. Yukari knows, somewhere, that there is no one better for this job than them, and yet, it hurts to think that the things she has suffered through and survived - the things her comrades have survived - are the backbone of the body of reasons that she’s able to do this, that she’s strong enough to do this.

Yukari leads from the sidelines. Not in battle, where they have Yamagishi to guide them, Arisato to command them and Kirijo to call out their mistakes. Yukari takes control of the only thing she knows how to do other than fight. She makes their barracks a home. She takes care of it and it’s residents. Menial chores come naturally, instinctively. Her bones are engraved with years of routine, and her brain is folded with worries and reminders. Repetitive actions calm her down, keep her busy, stop her anger from mingling with her impulses and catalysing a coalition of chaos that causes her to destroy herself. Caring about the others is forced at first; when she first joins, she flat-out ignores Sanada, and only extends Kirijo the courtesy of conversation on behalf of her father and his fate. Sometimes, she still has to force herself to care, on days when her impulses clash with Yamagishi’s anxiety, when her anger won’t allow her to understand Arisato’s reasoning, when Iori does - well, when he does anything, if Yukari’s honest with herself. Trusting someone in battle, trusting someone with your life, doesn’t merge well with the reality of being teenagers. That trust is fake, imperfect, a dull steel that claimed to be stainless before rusting over. She does her best to scrub it until it gleams, however. When she gets Arisato up in the mornings, when she helps Amada with his homework while pretending not to be giving him the answers, when she assists Yamagishi in clearing the aftermath of her attempt at cooking, she reminds herself that these are people who would give their lives for her. It’s hard to believe that a boy with his tongue sticking out as he rubs out an incorrect equation, or a girl with flour and soot smeared all over the bridge of her nose, or Iori in general, would ever be in a position where they would need to sacrifice themselves for someone else. They’ve proven otherwise. Yukari doesn’t think they know her as a person well enough to wish her happy birthday, but they know her as a soldier, and they know when she’s weak or vulnerable, and they protect her.

She never thinks of herself as “motherly” - the term turns stale in her mouth. She’s just trying to bridge the gap between being allies and being friends. There’s a level of selfishness to it too; she’s looking after them because looking after people is all she knows, and she doesn’t have the patience to unlearn it. Being in control of someone else’s well-being lets her trick herself into believing she’s in control of her own.

Her hands are covered in a mixture of chalk, wood resin and sweat. She pushes her fringe off of her face before realising she might be coating her hair the concoction too. Her eyes scan the length of the walkway, and she decides she’s alone and allowed to look as awful as she needs to. The only people at risk of seeing her are whoever’s left of the other sports clubs, and she doubts any of them will look any less gross than she does.

She’s jolted from her thoughts when the doors to her left swing open, and Arisato Minato, the boy she’s been waiting for, drags his tired body through them onto the pathway. Rather than being tucked characteristically into his pockets, his slender fingers shakily unspin tangled wires, and his eyes are glued to his work. Yukari clears her throat. He does not look up at her.

“Practice go well?” she asks, out of habit, knowing the reaction will be a limp head movement or a guttural sigh. It always is. “Have you got everything?”

Minato’s shoulders twitch in a way that lets Yukari know  both yes, he has, and that he isn’t feeling up to discussing practice, or anything, with her. She purses her lips.

“Great,” she says, lackluster. “Shall we head off then?”

The urgency with which Minato plays with the wires of his headphones increases. Yukari chalks it down to panic, imagines that he’s feeling a rising discomfort in going without wearing them so long. A few trudging steps forward, however, forces the panic to crescendo. Minato stops in his tracks. Yukari looks back at him; his MP3 and headphones now secured safely in one hand, the other eagerly pats down his pockets. He jumps, slightly, and the only sound that comes from his movement is his heavy boots hitting gravel. There’s no familiar jingle, whether it’s change or keys, and Minato looks up with eyes that don’t widden, but glisten, with worry. His lips tremble; it’s barely noticeable, but Yukari has her body synced with the reactions of the rest of her team. She smiles slightly. She knows - doesn’t entirely understand, but knows, acknowledges - it’s a day when talking makes Minato sick with nerves.

She keeps her voice stable, calm, strong - not motherly, never motherly - and hopes it’s comforting, not patronising. “Sometimes,” she begins, slowly, “after practice, the girls like to plant someone’s keys in another person's bag. Boys do it too, I’m sure. Wanna go double check you weren’t today’s victim?”

Minato’s brows soften, but his movements are still locked with panic. His lips tremble as he nods stoutly. His head drops. Yukari’s gaze drops with it. She sighs. Minato’s eyes are fixed on his MP3, and his shaking fingers spin wire like wool. A human loom, he looks up to Yukari again, and opens his mouth to speak, but she’s already extended a hand.

“I can detangle them, if you like,” she offers. “It’ll save you time. I mean, save both of us time, I guess, since you can just... Well, when you come back, they’ll be untangled and you won’t have to waste time standing around doing it!”

He flinches, slightly, a barely noticeable ripple under a tide of muscles and ligaments, and Yukari realises a little too late she made it sound like they were wasting time, like Minato was wasting time. She doesn’t apologise. She can’t, because in a moment he’s pushed his MP3 into her outstretched palm, and pivoted on his heel. He doesn’t look back at her, just hastily shoves his hands into his trouser pockets as he paces away.

The impact of the moment doesn’t really sink in until Yukari hears the double doors to the gym slam shut. Her neck, slowly, drips down, melting into the realisation that in her hands is the one thing she’s never seen Minato without. Her lips part. She logs this somewhere as a great achievement, to be so trusted by Arisato Minato that he would leave his biggest comfort item with her, and let her fix it for him. Her nimble fingers, used to stringing bows and drawing arrows, and with a little experience in pulling apart necklaces she’s flung together, peel the wires into two wavy but separate cords with relative ease. She looks up to the door. There’s no sign of Minato. Yukari now has time to burn, along with the ability to answer one of the biggest mysteries about Arisato Minato; just what is it that he is always listening to?

She knows, on all levels, that what she’s about to do is wrong, that it violates all the trust the two have built between them, but her thumb tingles with curiosity, and she bounces side to side with newfound energy, inspired by her inquisitivity. She throws her head up, takes a deep breath in, and gives herself a moment to gather resolve.

If Minato catches her like this... Yukari feels the air pass through her nose, harsh and cold and scentless, and thinks about how she’d feel if she found someone going through the things that gave her comfort, that made her feel safe. There would be anger, at first, followed by disappointment, and the sensation of being used or cheated or conned. She doesn’t think she’d go as far as to feel lied to, but there’s something dishonest that lingers before the taste of distrust. Yet her thumb presses down on the play button, and she lets the screen of the MP3 Player light up a gentle, ethereal blue regardless. She closes her eyes, nods to herself, then looks down.

Scrolling across the screen, in English, are the words IN THE END - LINKIN PARK.

Yukari feels her brows furrow. She hadn’t known Minato was interested in Western music - she feels like she’d have been less surprised to find something like Risette’s debut single, or the Featherman OP. She flicks her thumb to the left. The text judders and loads up the next song. IN THE END - LINKIN PARK. She flicks it again. IN THE END - LINKIN PARK. Must be set on repeat. Her shoulders sag. There goes unravelling the biggest mystery in the universe.

She turns it off, deciding there’s no way she has time to go to settings and disable repeat before Minato gets back, and sighs, contemplating what could have been.

 

\---

 

There’s a brief moment of silence, then the metallic clicks of locks resetting echoes through the hallway. When Aigis had first displayed her lock-picking abilities, it had made Yukari uncomfortable. She’d been afraid of losing the sense of security and privacy living in dorms had given her, the sense of being able to shut everyone out, to shut her mother out. Now, it’s a heavily utilisable part of everyday life, and she’s come to rely on it.

She’s handing out clean washing, taking comfort in regularity and chores. Minato’s out - she thinks he goes to the Shrine on Saturdays, but she isn’t really sure. He’s restless, and seldom stays in his room. Not like Junpei, who doesn’t ever leave. Yukari doesn’t even know if he’s in any clubs, excluding SEES, which shouldn’t count. She places clean clothes on the foot of his bed, and prepares to leave for Akihiko’s room.

She passes his laptop. It’s open a crack.

Maybe...

“Hey, Aigis?” she begins. “Can your lockpicking programme get you into computers?”

Aigis tilts her head with a mechanic whir. “Yes, Takeba-san. But why would you-”

“Just, c’me here a sec,” Yukari slides herself into the seat at Minato’s desk, and pulls his screen up. “Think you can get in?”

“He doesn’t password protect it,” Aigis states. “Says it is too much effort for something with no useful or incriminating information stored on it.”

Yukari sticks her tongue out a little, and logs in. “Does he now?” Her fingers fly over keys, and she pulls up his music library, excited to see whether Minato likes other English bands, maybe some of the pop group's she does? That would be nice, they could bond. She pulls the file up.

One song. Nearly 30,000 plays. In The End by Linkin Park.

 

\---

 

“I bet he really relates to the themes of the song... How existence is futile and fighting is worth nothing... Seems like the kind of feelings our leader would embody...”

“I still don’t think Takeba-san should have been going through his things...”

“Takeba-san was not alone. I, also, was present.”

“Hey, ladies? I’m theorising here? I just made a really good point?”

Yukari pushes back her fringe. “We’ll just ask him. When he gets back.”

Fuuka, sitting across from her on the sofa, bunches up her skirt nervously. “I’d feel bad... Takeba-san, what if this affects the group? What if he won’t work with us anymore? I don’t want to hurt him. He’s... He has to deal with a lot...”

Junpei slams his hands on the coffee table. “That’s why I’m telling you, it’s the only song he listens to because it’s the only song that brings him peace! He can relate to its messages, he understands it! Like it was made for him!”

Rubbing her forehead tiredly, Yukari groans. “It has nearly 30,000 plays, Junpei. That’s too many. It’s not even a good song. We need to help him get taste, or something.”

The doors rattle open, and Arisato Minato stumbles in. The group at the tables fall silent. His eyes skim them all, clearly confused, but he doesn’t linger in the lounge. He makes a beeline for the stairs to their rooms.

“Hey,” Yukari stands up. “We’re just talking about bands we like! Got any music recs?”

She hears Fuuka gasp and whisper to herself about how this is a mistake and they should all just respect Minato’s privacy, but Minato approaches them and pulls his headphones from his ears, thoughtful.

“I was just saying how I love Lotus Juice,” Junpei shrugs.

Aigis whirs to life. “No, you weren’t, we were-”

“Oh! Aigis-san!” Fuuka jumps up. “I just remembered, I was going to ask you to help me cook!”

Minato slides into an armchair as Fuuka grabs Aigis limply by the wrist and pulls her along. “Play some,” he mutters. At the creasing of Junpei’s brow, he says, a little louder, “Play some Lotus Juice.”

Junpei scrambles for his phone, and Yukari says, “You must be pretty knowledgable about music, since you’re always plugged in.”

“Not really,” Minato leans closer to the table, and watches Junpei tap the keys on his phone to find a tiny recording of a rapper Yukari’s vaguely familiar with. “Ever heard of Linkin Park?”

“Yes,” Yukari snaps under pressure. “Yes, I have because - I’m so sorry, we went through your laptop, they’re the only artist on there, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I did that, I-”

“Hey! Don’t say ‘we’ like I was involved!” Junpei throws his hands up, dropping his phone. “I didn’t- I swear I had nothing to do with it! It was all Yuka-tan! Blame her!”

“That’s right!” Yukari cries. “Blame me! Forgive me!”

Minato goes slack, overwhelmed. He makes a guttural, confused noise, before asking, “This was a ruse?”

The way his voice cracks snaps something inside Yukari, as she realises how badly she’s messed up, how much trust she’s violated. “Yes,” she pushes herself up to face him, her cheeks hot and red. “It was.”

“Oh,” Minato’s face falls in disappointment. “I thought you guys were finally ready to hear In The End, the greatest song of all time.”

“We... What?” Junpei fans himself with his hat.

“It’s the only song on my MP3,” Minato shrugs. “The only song I - or anyone, I guess - could ever need.”

“So you don’t... You don’t like, connect with it?” Junpei asks. “Like, spiritually?”

“I connect with it in the fact I think it’s really fucking good,” Minato admits, nonchalantly. “Ever heard it? It will change your life.”

Yukari feels her insides churn. He’s not upset. She... What? “You’re okay with us going through your things?” Her head is spinning. Did she so drastically misinterpret Minato’s character that she created a whole persona for him that he doesn’t belong to? Did she mess up that bad?

Minato pauses for a second. She realises he doesn’t really know how to feel. “I guess... I’m am, but also... This is different, you know? It’s a good song.”

“You’ve listened to it nearly 30,000 times.”

“Yeah, it’s a good song.”He passes a headphone to her. “Decent tune.”

She strings it over her ear. It’s not a very good song, but she can’t tell that to his eager, excited face, so she forces a smile, and thinks.

Later that evening, she pulls him aside. She explains to him that she thought it was a huge deal that he let her look after his MP3 Player, that she feels awful, that she doesn’t understand why he wasn’t mad, and Minato assures her that it was, in many ways, a big deal for him to give her it. Not because of the music on it, but because of what it symbolises. The music doesn’t mean a lot to Minato, but the MP3 Player, his headphones... They’re proof of something. Something that shows he can escape somewhere else, something familiar while everything else changes, something he owns, something he relies on. Trusting Yukari with it is in every way the spectacle she made it out to be. But she didn’t violate that trust. She took his MP3 Player and she untangled it for him, and if anything, that just proved he was right to give it to her.

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: for a member of sees to find out that minato only has linkin park on his ipod, a la the well known screenshot
> 
> interested in my writing ? find out more at : http://megidolaon.tumblr.com/post/146309834661 or contact me here, or on my tumblr (@megidolaon) or twitter (@runicshield) if you have any questions


End file.
